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This is an example of one thread - Feminism - which has recently been turned into its own subforum. Thus we are currently breaking that very interesting, but very long, thread into sub-discussions where appropriate. This will leave the original thread with a lot of views while the new threads will apparently have fewer. They'll begin to catch up though.

Not the army as such, but close enough: two "petite" women join the armed reponse unit of the police then sue for sexual discrimination when their hands prove too small to operate a gun designed for a man, and win £35,000 in compensation.

There used to be a minimum height requirement for joining the police in certain parts of Britain (at least for men, don't know about for women), but that got abolished when it was considered to racially discriminate against ethnic groups considered less likely on average to meet the standard.

The key question is, are standards being dropped to accommodate the women? Generally speaking, the answer is no.

There are a few mixed infantry battalions which are generally considered second-rate. They're used for patrolling the long southern borders.

There are also observer corps, and other units which don't involve physical exertion (e.g. flying a drone remotely, observing the border with cameras, intelligence corps). There women are on equal footing with men.

There are only a few elite units in which standards are not dropped, yet in which women are accepted, such as the air force. Perhaps one-tenth to one-twentieth of graduates are female, and they're just as good as the men. A couple of months ago a few Israeli tourists were killed in a surprise snowstorm in Nepal; one of these was a female navigator. She was taking a vacation to unwind a bit after the hard fighting last summer.

IDF presented today medals, decorations and citations for the part of male and female soldier infighting in Operation Protective Edge. But the praise written about them, caused discomfort, due the difference in the commendations written for male and female soldiers...

Corporal Noah Teital, also received a letter of commendation ... "Despite the difficulty inherent in identifying the enemy in a complex area, Corporal Noah Teital didn't lose herself to panic and called in the commanders".

The descriptions which talk about female soldiers not losing their senses, are very different from those of the male officers and fighters - which especially mentioned courage on the battlefield.

Of course, the story doesn't explicitly state an important difference. The female soldiers were sitting in an (probably) air-conditioned office, remotely viewing the battlefield on a computer monitor. The men were charging forward under fire.

Here's a woman boxer, you see. When you see her alongside the guy on the left, for example, you can appreciate it's just blatant sexism to claim that men and women are in some way different! What harm could there be if more of our army was populated by such women up against those Russian troops and crazed Muslims?

I say increase the army to an exact 50/50 men and women and maintain it at that. Drop those silly limits on strength and carrying stuff, too. That's just sexist. What we need most is equality (never mind survival).